MaglorD

lol you're right. After I pressed F4(quicksave), the lag returned. Stupid ATI. Like I said, poor testing methodology.

I was actually referring to Kotor 2 Dantooine. The Exile ran from Khoonda to the outskirts of the enclave and then to the Mandalorian camp and did not encounter lag. Still when I loaded up Malachor V, I noticed the frame rate was half what it was - on my system it used to be around 30-40 with maxed AA/AF at 1280x960, but after removing the DVBO line, it dropped to 15. Looks like ATI aren't very thorough with their testing and bug fixing. I suppose that happens when they're churning out drivers monthly instead of say half-yearly like Nvidia and doing a proper job of testing. They have a habit of fixing something only to break something else and this is due to their poor testing methodology. In this case, they were trying to address the frame rate issues at the Dantooine level and while they apparently fixed it, they forgot to do a regression test on the rest of the game.

Wrong, the line is no longer needed if you use Cats 5.4 CCC.

Ok, what driver version are you using? Did you modify your swkotor.ini file?

The X800 Pro's a good card, especially for D3D games like Half-Life 2.

While I have no love for the CCC, it looks like ATI doesn't leave us with much of a choice. Most of their development effort is centered on the CCC, while the old control panel withers away.

In spite of the game's bugginess, many people managed to complete it both LS and DS.

CCC does make a difference. For instance I don't get graphic glitches at 1280x960 using the CCC but I do with the old control panel. Not sure why but that's what I observed. As for the glow effect, I could never see a big difference. If 4.4 gives you the effects you like, you might want to use the 4.4 ATI OGL file.

How do you find Cats 4.4? Do you experience any area transition crashes? This was very easy to test on the original Kotor. Just use "transit to hideout" and back. Repeat till it crashes. I am not sure when but several Cats before 4.11 suffered from this bug. Perhaps 4.4 was the lasting working driver before the bug.

I finally got to testing Cats 5.4 with Kotor 2 and am pleased to say they DID fix the Dantooine lag. I removed the Disable Vertex Buffer Objects line and don't experience any lag. This was tested on Cats 5.4 CCC, so perhaps it only works on the CCC.

Something is wrong with your 6800 setup because I don't experience any slowdowns with my 6800GT at all. I'd go out on a limb to say the game performance is flawless except I did get one black screen as documented in the KotOR 2 readme, fixed easily with quicksave/load. Why don't you try using your Unian v1.1.53 without using the 4.3 OGL and see how Dantooine plays out? Don't include the Disable Vertex Buffer Objects in your ini file. Btw, the 4.3 OGL is not supported by the X-series Radeons so what would you suggest for getting the glow effects?

It was never completely fixed even with the original so I doubt it will happen with this game. The most obvious trouble currently seems to be with the ATI drivers and how vertex shader objects are handled. Cats 4.10 and several driver versions before suffered from the horrible area transition crashes. As for the comment about Nvidia and ATI, I'm not sure I'll generalise by saying ATI runs faster. It really depends which specific models one is comparing. While it may be true for the very high-end cards today, it isn't necessarily true for the mid-range or upper mid-range cards. And we all know ATI performs dismally for Nvidia-optimised Doom 3 compared to Nvidia. While Nvidia's 5000(FX) series is no match for ATI, their 6000 series is pretty decent. ATI make good hardware but seem to be let down by less polished drivers compared with Nvidia. Or perhaps, many game manufacturers such as Bioware optimise their games/engines for Nvidia rather than ATI.

Didn't have a problem with Vrook but then I visited Dantooine after Nar Shaddar. The closest to dying I had was with Mira first time round cuz I didn't convert her to Jedi and didn't expect to have to fight Hanharr again. She was using melee then instead of blasters.

I always finish the game around 24-28 and it's already pretty easy. No need to get to 30+.

Consular/Sith Lord if there's one force power cheesier than Force Storm, it's Force Crush...nothing can stand against spamming Force Crush. And you don't get hit. Consular/Jedi Master Force Enlightenment, Stasis, Flurry. Rinse repeat as necessary. Force Storm works too but it's slower.

Depends on who is designing the engine. If it's Bioware, you can be sure it will the same thing as Bioware likes to base their new engines on their older ones, so all the ATI bugs get transferred over...just like Odyssey was developed from Aurora.

Probably got the idea from Dune.

I suggest Nar Shaddar. You get your lightsabre much faster there, at least I did. And there are more opportunities to influence your companions. You also get another person joining your team.

Bioware has traditionally been rather quick at producing patches. But then again, they designed all the engines for the games they created so probably have the technical expertise to quickly fix the issues.

Nvidia's FX series is known to be generally poor at D3D compared to the competition.

In EP1 and 2, the Jedi Council appears to be taking a far more active role than in KotOR 1/2 in protecting the Republic, though it seems all for naught as the Republic still falls to Sidious and Vader, heralding the Dark Ages...

If you're LS and die in the cave when facing those ghosts, you get DS points. As for the part when you confront Kreia and your other crew, there is a bug and the only way to complete it is to choose the neutral path, which is to stand back and watch. Be ready for a difficult fight since all your crew will attack you and if you, like me, have converted all potential Jedi, they'll use those powers against you :D

KotOR 1 also had the same problem until it was patched, so it is most likely a game issue.

I played the game through several times on an X800XTPE(agp) and fortunately did not encounter the issues you experienced. When I exit the game, my gamma resets to the ATI desktop factory setting, which is actually too dark for my CRT monitor. This is probably a dumb question but did you try doing a quicksave and reloading. Seems to fix the problem for some people.

And Bastila...